I woke up with a splitting headache, as I usually do, but this time it was different. It was weirder, like something was buzzing about in my head; some unspeakable thing had slipped in and was raising hell in my brain. I smelled an awful stench, like dead fish rotting in a pit of burnt corpses. Then, I heard His voice coming from my couch.

"Ugh, that was crazy. Like, phn'glui ftghan crazy, you know? Hey Nyar, you there? Nyar? Azathoth damn it, Nyarlathotep, where the hell are—" He stopped for a moment, then continued "This isn't Nyar's pad, and this sure as hell isn't Rl'yeh, so where The HELL AM I?"

I was almost too frightened to leave my bedroom, but I shook it off. Fear is for the weak, the strong man fears nothing. "So you keep telling yourself," a small voice in the back of my head posited, "you've seen where that mindset's taken you before." I ordered my snake brain to quiet that voice of unreason, and it did. I call my brainstem my snake brain, because it is cunning and crafty. Like me. I began to devise a plan, a plan so elaborate and complicated, to print it would be like printing the quadratic formula. It was simply too complex, with too many intricacies. Think of the traps McCauley Culkin set for Mario and Luigi in Home Alone. They would look simpler than a wheel next to mine. Without a word, I changed into my daytime clothes, and set my plan into action.

To say I charged into the room would be an exaggeration, to say I snuck in would be an insult to my bravery. To say I waltzed would be to question my knowledge of various dances. No, I strode in, with the confidence of a man who knows his enemy's head is securely in the crosshairs of a friendly sniper with a hair trigger and an itchy finger. I strode in and I saw Him and I nearly screamed like a schoolgirl. He looked even worse than He did when I met Him, as if the light amplified His ugliness. I usually keep all my blinds closed and my lights on to confuse my brain, the traitorous bastard it is, but somehow natural light was flooding in through the bulletproof panes of reinforced fiberglass that were my windows. He looked at me, He looked through me, and He looked to me and spoke again in that grating voice.

"Oh Azathoth please tell me we didn't. I don't usually swing that way, oh man how many shots did I have last night?"

"Okay, to clear things up, we did not. I'm into the ladies. The human ladies," I put too much emphasis into the word human to properly describe, "and you had two mojitos. You were too drunk to give me directions back to your swamp house thing."

"Oh yeah! That was a wild ride. Are you sure I didn't do shots? I feel like I did. Hey, did I score?"

"No. You scared quite a few whores though," to his credit, they looked jumpy to begin with. "And you made a priest nearly shit himself, so that was cool."

"Aww man, I am so sorry."

"Don't be, it the funniest thing I ever saw. His face was all," I imitated the horrified look that the man of the cloth wore on his face. "And he just stared praying, oh my god it was funny!"

"Yeah, about that… Most people can't comprehend my foreignness, you're like, the first person who can actually look at me without, you know, going crazy. It kinda works both ways a bit, too. I start to lost control of myself outside of the Outside. So I guess you could call it Inside or whatever. But yeah, I need to get back to Rl'yeh, or anywhere Outside if I'm to stay alive, oh it's hard to explain. Anyway, Rl'yeh is the closest, and that swamp is a waystation between here and there. I really need to get there. Could I bum a ride?"

I gave Him one, and at the marsh we tromped through the stagnant, brackish waters and the clinging, sickly mosses and scums until we found the circle. I bid Him farewell, and tried not to watch as He left, falling into the drain, His body distorting as it slipped through the tear in the fabric of reality present in that evil place. I waded back, somehow finding my car after a few hours and much discomfort. I have since burned those jeans.

Every once in a while I'll see Him on the street, and we'll talk, drink, and scare whores. They say that it's good to have friends in high places, but damn if it isn't fun to have friends in mad places.

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